Friday, January 25, 2008

Was Charles Darwin an Atheist?

That's the question asked by Irwin Tessman in the January/February 2008 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Tessman is a Professor Emeritus in the Biology Department at Purdue University. You can see a podcast of his lecture, "A Darwinian View of a Hostile Atheist" at [The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University].

Tessman is interested in comparing the views of the so-called "militant atheist," Richard Dawkins with the religious views of Charles Darwin. He concludes that their views are not very different. The biggest difference between the two men is that Darwin choose to hide his lack of religion from the public in deference to his wife Emma, who was a devout Anglican.

With the publication of the compete text of Darwin's autobiography in 1958, we now have much greater insight into Darwin's thoughts about religion. Here's how Tessman puts it,

Where does Darwin stand on the matter of a personal God? "The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which seemed so conclusive, fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man" (Darwin 1958, p.87). Darwin seems to reject the idea of a personal God and, therefore, theism too. His religious views are difficult to pin down (Browne, 2006, p.46), but something close to deism would seem to fit.

Theism is a belief in a personal God, one who responds to prayers and interferes in daily events; atheism is the opposite of theism. Deism is the belief in a God who set the universe in motion whit all the physical laws and both sacred and learned commentaries, but was absent after that. In practice, deism is much like atheism.

There seems to be general agreement that Darwin did not subscribe to the tenets of any organized religion. There is debate over whether he believed in supernatural beings. His Grandfather, father, and brother were non-believers so it's reasonable to suppose that Darwin was too.

He may have been comfortable with agnostic, a term that was invented by his friend Thomas Huxley. This would have been far more acceptable to Emma than atheist. I suspect that if Darwin were alive today he would be an atheist ... unless Emma were also alive.

13 comments
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I can't recall where, but Darwin explicitly calls himself an agnostic in Huxley's sense (I think, in a letter to Huxley). As to whether he'd be an atheist now, that's the sort of question it's very hard to give a sensible answer to. You are asking if a person whose views were formed in the mid-19th century would be that person if their views were formed in the mid-20th or later. I think that Darwin would be an agnostic today, albeit atheistical about certain religions (such as the fundamentalist gods of various religions).

And why would it matter? What counts is what a person today is led to think by reflection and reason, and whether you Dawkinsians like it or not, a lot of folk like myself think that agnosticism is the only general view that is rational.

And why would it matter? What counts is what a person today is led to think by reflection and reason, and whether you Dawkinsians like it or not, a lot of folk like myself think that agnosticism is the only general view that is rational.

I didn't mean to start that fight.

The point of the article, I think, was that Darwin's view of religion in 1870 was not very different from that of Richard Dawkins today.

I doesn't "matter" in any real sense except to help spread the word that atheism—or nonbeliever-agnosticism, if you prefer—is not a new phonomenon of the 21st century.

Wilkins, like a lot of people, is confused over the distinction between the terms "agnostic" and "atheist". Simply put, the former is an epistemological position (I do not know whether a god exists or not) while the latter pertains to what one does or does not believe concerning a god's existence. What one can claim to know, and what one chooses to believe, are two different things.

Most Christians, if you back them up against a wall, will admit to being agnostic theists. They admit they don't know for certain and cannot prove that their god exists, but they believe it does all the same. I would describe myself as agnostic atheist.

A lot of people like to think there's a kind of "pure" agnosticism that exists on its own, as a safe, non-committal neutral position on the matter (and this is almost always because they simply find the word "atheist" scary), but this isn't really the case. All you need to ask these people is how they live their day to day lives: as if a god does exist or as if one doesn't. If they say "I don't live my life either way," then that defaults to the latter choice. If you're living as if the very notion of a god is irrelevant to you, then the honest thing to say is that you don't believe. You may not be a proactive, oppositional atheist like Dawkins and the lot, but you're an atheist all the same.

While I have no doubt that dariwn had atheistic thoughts, he was no decidedly antirreligious guy, making reference to god and that even the idea that he may have created one or a few forms to start with. Darwin was not yet "ready" to adopt a scientific approach to the origin of life.

But Mats, Miller is clearly not a True ChristianTM, as he's arguing for both the truth of Christian theism and the heresy of Godless "Darwinism".

Clearly,you missed the point of my sarcasm. What I said was a reference to Miller's futile atempt to reconcile magic evolution with Christian theology. This post, I believe, was done to demonstrate that Darwin's view of the world was totally against Biblical Christianity. Accordingly, what does this do to Miller's atempt to reconcile Christianity with Darwin?

This pretty much shows how reliable Miller is on Christian theology.

Oh, and it shows that Darwinists who point to him as evidence that one can be a Christian and a darwinist are either ignorant of darwin's true message, or are deceiving the "ignorant masses".

mats"What I said was a reference to Miller's futile atempt to reconcile magic evolution with Christian theology."Oh, you... You put "magic" in front of the wrong term.

"...Darwin's true message"What, that over time generations of living things can change? Golly, what an insidious message. He'll come after our children, next!

"The "true scotsman" is used by darwinists frequently: "All true scientists say that evolution is a fact!"Don't forget IDs "Boy, things sure are complicated!", or the creationist's "Evolution is just a theory!". Sometimes, they spell evolution "evilution", just to be witty.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

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The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.